He always had a way of explaining things so I could understand it easily and I found myself agreeing with what he had to say most of the time. He is also a very good wordsmith, where as like a Danny Kelly comes off better on the radio. It would be interesting to see what he has to say about this season. Let me know what you think. Go Hawks

You are right, Field Gulls isn't the same without him, now it is written by intelligent, logical, rational people that don't strive for the validation of their readers and then freak out when people disagree with him.

Also, his book sucked. Learn your teams history and respect that history before you write a book about what Seahawks fans should do before they die.

I really couldn't stand that guy.

Not trying to bite your head off, this is my opinion, and it obviously differs with yours, and that's fine.

There are a lot of good wordsmiths here. Some of the people who write here are better than a lot of the people who get paid for it.

49ers webzone: Win or lose, i hope you injure Sherman. Like a serious career ending injury. I don't want him to get paid.49ers webzone: noise should not be the overwhelming reason a team is favored. they need to spray noise-damping foam onto the ceiling of that place.

Just as I thought, I missed the boat on the Morgan hate fest. All I know is this, when he left, I became less interested in fieldgulls. Now does that make me a complete idiot? Maybe I should give them another try.

Great writer, not so great person. If you ever waded into the comments section during his time you'd fully understand the reaction from a lot of people in this thread.

It is true that Morgan's writing was hard to top- when he was on point. Problem was, his brilliance birthed him an enormous ego, which prevented him from ever being wrong on anything, no matter how insignificant. He backed Tim Ruskell to the bitter end and he (and his minions) were extremely bitter and nasty regarding Ruskell's demise and the hiring of Carroll/Schneider. BrianL is 90% as bad as Morgan was, and I remember when John Schneider was hired and he found the dopiest picture of John Schneider he could find and captioned it "what is your job exactly, anyway?" Not exactly a warm welcome for our new GM. That post was eventually taken down. Huge e-fights in the wake of the Tapp and Wilson trades resulted in some very heavy revisionist edits after the fact- to erase from the record some of the horrible things they said to people who merely suggested that the world had not just ended.

Morgan had an essay, and it was if I may say the most narcissistic piece of trash I've ever read, that basically lamented that only incompetent people with connections could be GMs in the NFL- obviously directing it at John Schneider. He had another rant that was way worse along the same lines that he took down 24 hours later when he realized how insane it was (I think Montana still has a .txt copy of that one). In September he did a post ripping the shit out of both Wilson and Flynn. He'd later take it down. You might be noticing a theme here.

Now this week he did an essay talking about how he's quitting the NFL as a fan because it's a violent sport. He will probably take that one down too, because nobody is buying it and it just makes him look disingenuous. Football has always been a violent sport- in fact it's actually safer now than it's ever been. Nobody is stupid enough to believe he just figured this out. It's a paper thin facade for his real reason for quitting: that he just can't stand being wrong about Tim Ruskell and all the bad bets he took to double down on that position. Perhaps he even believes that if Ruskell were vindincated, he (Morgan) would be justified in how he treated others that disagreed with him.

I used to be a huge fan of his. I learned and grew a lot from reading his works. When he is on point there is no better writer anywhere, period. In 2008 I stuck my neck out promoting his work here at .net. A year later, out of the blue, he banned me for no sane reason (I was always civil and rarely confrontational), and I am reasonably sure he banned me because I was winning fans as a draft analyst, and he struggled to hide how much that bothered him that anyone else on his site could be looked up to. After he banned me he made up a rule saying that he could ban civil users if he felt like it.

I later learned that he suffers from some kind of mental illness- but I don't think that excuses much.

I actually don't read FGs anymore, but that's mainly because of the horrid scheme overhaul they had recently. Danny Kelly is a really nice guy whom I exchange emails with all the time. He may not be John Morgan as a writer but the site/community is clearly better with him in charge.

Anyone remember all his draft writeups during the first draft for Pete and John? It was pure insanity as he tried to make them look terrible, and had a borderline obsession with linking them to Taylor Mays.

""I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity."

Always thought of this Calvin and Hobbes quote when I read his writing. Its a fun read, until you realize there is nothing behind it but half truths and hyperbole.

That said, John Morgan wasn't the first and certainly isn't the last person to use sports as a vehicle for self vindication. As it seems on this board as well some people are more concerned with being right than anything else. Morgan was a very public(in the Seahawks world) example of this.

I only really started to learn more about the Seahawks and other NFL teams in 2008 when I first started playing Fantasy Football and Madden. Before that I didn't know a tight end from a free safety, so I'm a newby when it comes to football fundamentals. I always found that John Morgan's articles had deep analysis and were extremely well presented so even a newbie like me could learn something from them. I was sad to see him go for this reason even though I was aware he had a lot of detractors. I like Danny Kelly and Field Gulls still pumps out good articles, but it doesn't quite feel the same as the analysis John Morgan provided.

I'm also with Kearly about the new site format. I don't go there nearly as much as I used to because of it.

"If the opportunity presents itself, we're going to come get you. You’re part of the family. You're part of us. You helped us start this thing." - John Schneider before releasing Michael Robinson

Danny Kelly and his colleagues are more straightforward in their writing, but as football analysts they're the best the site has ever had. They can look at a play and go much further into the scheme origins, building blocks, and intentions of a play than anyone I've ever read around here.

I just found his writing to be one long, thin veil over a planet-sized ego. And it wasn't very good writing at that. I found out recently that he was no longer blessing us mere mortals with his wisdom, but still can't be arsed checking to see if it's true.

Haven't read this John Morgan guy's stuff, but the way people talk about him reminds me of a guy back in college who I served in student government with. I was 17, he was 35ish, and I kind of looked up to him. However, it seemed he was always starting battles. He had some great insights, but he was never wrong about anything, and went to great lengths to "prove" that he was the only right, pure and just individual in existence, and the rest of us were just corrupt minions if we didn't agree with him. It was interesting and kind of exciting at the time, and I could see many of his points. After a drawn-out battle where he leveled personal attack after personal attack at people I liked and respected, he eventually chose to resign in a very dramatic huff because he wasn't getting his way. 30 years later, I look back on this person, knowing what I now know, and I'd say that guy from 30 years ago shows a lot of traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.A local political parallel is the saga of elected Pierce county treasurer Dale Washam. You can read about him here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/washam/TNT: "The tenure of Dale Washam, Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer, has turned a minor government office into a fountain of perpetual controversy: six independent investigations; five claims for damages; a recall campaign; charges of violating the county ethics code; and a resolution from the Pierce County Council that declares no confidence in Washam and asks him to resign..The investigations state that Washam retaliated against his employees, violated their rights, wasted government resources, abused his power and hindered the inquiries. Costs of those investigations and other legal matters tied to Washam's office exceed $412,000. The county has settled the damage claims for a collective total of $1.13 million."

When I see a sequence of events with those kinds of parallels, like the ones Kearly describes, especially involving over-the-top attacks on others and covert retaliation, I just expect that there is some sort of personality disorder (Narcissistic PD, Borderline PD, Antisocial PD) involved somewhere. These people create drama and conflict wherever they go. They are very clever and know how to tie legal/personnel types of systems in knots. They can also be very brilliant in their areas of specialty, so much so that they get an inflated sense of their capability and start assuming they have gifts and talents in *every* area and they are infallible and the rest of us are a bunch of idiots. They get away with a lot of their crap because normal people don't want to believe another human would really do the stuff they pull.

This is part of why I was very skeptical about the Richard Sherman failed test and the violation of testing procedures. A frustrated sociopath with Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder would have no problem creating a false positive and they would do it for the excitement and drama and rush of power. If you've ever been on the receiving end of a "Distortion Campaign" from a Borderline or Narcissist, these people will do anything to damage others they feel stand in their way, and concoct elaborate schemes, destroy and falsify evidence, etc. A little more about distortion campaigns is here: http://angiemedia.com/2008/12/29/bpd-di ... campaigns/ The problem you will have on the receiving end is that many "normal" people will simply refuse to believe that another human could do the things that are being done to you, and will conclude that YOU must be the crazy one, to make up these stories. (look at how things went down with Sherman, he got called a cheater, had phony stories made up about his denials, etc. Even though Sherman has congruently denied the allegations and phony stories from day one, there are posters on this board *still* acting as if those phony stories are true, calling Sherman names.) Borderlines and Narcissists are behind a majority of high-conflict divorces. These issues are rampant in hotly contested family court cases. If not in the ex, good possibility in their attorney, influencing the ex to act that way. Some experts estimates are that about 10% of the (U.S.) population has one of these types of personality disorders or other mental health issues that result in behavior that can only truly be labeled as sociopathic. When you see this type of conflict and drama, start looking for the mental health issues, educate yourself about what you are dealing with, and protect yourself.

I dont like the guy and went out of my way to let him know. He reposted to rip one of my hacky offseason articles as a way to shootdown the competition, this site. It was weak for a lot of reasons, mainly I wrote nonsensical change-of-pace BS.

I'm with Volsung - I liked how he wrote. And I can overlook people who put out the odd annoying article - they can't all be winners.

Kearly, Morgan wrote an article which explains his condition. And I think that gives a bit of context to his writing. He may have been a Stalin-like controller of the comment boards, but if a site is somebody's vanity project then why try to engage in arguments with them? There's a lot of internet out there - just go somewhere else, or put up your own site like Rob and you do - and the traffic will eventually go where the good stuff is.

I have been quite impressed with a couple of recent articles on Fieldgulls, but I almost never go there. I do most of my Seahawks browsing whilst sat on the bog (you're welcome guys, that image is for free) and it is almost impossible to read the Fieldgulls site on an android phone. Hawkblogger puts up a couple of decent posts every so often (whilst a lot are pure stats based), but I think there is a real vacancy for a creative and interesting Hawks 'fan writer' just now.

cdallan wrote:And I think that gives a bit of context to his writing. He may have been a Stalin-like controller of the comment boards, but if a site is somebody's vanity project then why try to engage in arguments with them? There's a lot of internet out there - just go somewhere else, or put up your own site like Rob and you do - and the traffic will eventually go where the good stuff is.

That's actually what I did, exactly as you say. In fact, I left FGs and started writing at SBD exactly one day before I was banned out of the blue. Funny enough.

I have to disagree with you on that other point though. Fieldgulls was never owned by Morgan and was never "his" site. It's supposed to be SB Nation's site for all Seahawks fans, and he didn't even found it, he inherited it from a guy named "Shrug."

Even if it was his site, I personally don't think it's ever justifiable to treat people the way he did. Just because I am hosting guests at a party does not give me the right to spit in their faces on a whim. And as Pehawk already pointed out, Morgan did more than piss on his own readers- he attacked pretty much anyone else that talked Seahawks, whether it was people from .net, Mike Sando, and others.

Really, if you did not experience what he did first hand, you probably wouldn't appreciate how sinister he was. Before he banned me, he did a very convincing job of making it seem like everything was going well between us. Then sent me the most venom dripped message I've ever read in my life a couple weeks later when he sprung the attack. After reading it and realizing how he had set me up emotionally, I was almost in awe of how demonic he was.

I never knew the guy. I was too busy making Frank Hughes look like even more of an idiot than he did himself. He was such a moron he couldn't even figure out how to ban me from Tribnet when he took over for Sando. I'd point out just flat out plagiarism and lies he'd post. He was so full of it. He wouldn't show up for weeks at a time, until he realized that I was calling him out daily, then he'd show up simply to delete my posts, but he still couldn't figure out how to ban me, and I was told by others at the Trib, that Frank wouldn't ask them to ban me, because then they might see the posts I put up and how I busted him about 15 times.

I finally put up a petition and got a couple of hundred people to sign it within a week or so and Frank was "re-assigned" or I mean he "QUIT" right after it. It was the best work I've ever done. I did what had to be done. The great part was that it opened up a slot for Ryan Divish, who is a good guy and is funny and doesn't pretend to know anything. I've never once heard Divish bitch about having to travel to a road game. Frank literally did a whole game report griping about having to travel to Chicago for a playoff game and how cold it was. That was his whole game report! Frank knew a lot about basketball, but man was he a baby and a liar. Then of course Eric got his position covering the Hawks and the coverage became a thousand times better. Frank literally took training camp time off because he felt it was the offseason. WTF?! That is when Eric really doubles up or quadruples up on posts.

MontanaHawk05 wrote:Danny Kelly and his colleagues are more straightforward in their writing, but as football analysts they're the best the site has ever had. They can look at a play and go much further into the scheme origins, building blocks, and intentions of a play than anyone I've ever read around here.

Agreed Montana. I think they do a lot of things that could not be done before of all 22 and great animated gifs (for you smokey). I actually hate the format but continue to go there for the good work.

"If we lose ... this place will be a Carnival of Stupidity." FlyingGreg

olyfan63 wrote:Haven't read this John Morgan guy's stuff, but the way people talk about him reminds me of a guy back in college who I served in student government with. I was 17, he was 35ish, and I kind of looked up to him. However, it seemed he was always starting battles. He had some great insights, but he was never wrong about anything, and went to great lengths to "prove" that he was the only right, pure and just individual in existence, and the rest of us were just corrupt minions if we didn't agree with him. It was interesting and kind of exciting at the time, and I could see many of his points. After a drawn-out battle where he leveled personal attack after personal attack at people I liked and respected, he eventually chose to resign in a very dramatic huff because he wasn't getting his way. 30 years later, I look back on this person, knowing what I now know, and I'd say that guy from 30 years ago shows a lot of traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.A local political parallel is the saga of elected Pierce county treasurer Dale Washam. You can read about him here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/washam/TNT: "The tenure of Dale Washam, Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer, has turned a minor government office into a fountain of perpetual controversy: six independent investigations; five claims for damages; a recall campaign; charges of violating the county ethics code; and a resolution from the Pierce County Council that declares no confidence in Washam and asks him to resign..The investigations state that Washam retaliated against his employees, violated their rights, wasted government resources, abused his power and hindered the inquiries. Costs of those investigations and other legal matters tied to Washam's office exceed $412,000. The county has settled the damage claims for a collective total of $1.13 million."

When I see a sequence of events with those kinds of parallels, like the ones Kearly describes, especially involving over-the-top attacks on others and covert retaliation, I just expect that there is some sort of personality disorder (Narcissistic PD, Borderline PD, Antisocial PD) involved somewhere. These people create drama and conflict wherever they go. They are very clever and know how to tie legal/personnel types of systems in knots. They can also be very brilliant in their areas of specialty, so much so that they get an inflated sense of their capability and start assuming they have gifts and talents in *every* area and they are infallible and the rest of us are a bunch of idiots. They get away with a lot of their crap because normal people don't want to believe another human would really do the stuff they pull.

This is part of why I was very skeptical about the Richard Sherman failed test and the violation of testing procedures. A frustrated sociopath with Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder would have no problem creating a false positive and they would do it for the excitement and drama and rush of power. If you've ever been on the receiving end of a "Distortion Campaign" from a Borderline or Narcissist, these people will do anything to damage others they feel stand in their way, and concoct elaborate schemes, destroy and falsify evidence, etc. A little more about distortion campaigns is here: http://angiemedia.com/2008/12/29/bpd-di ... campaigns/ The problem you will have on the receiving end is that many "normal" people will simply refuse to believe that another human could do the things that are being done to you, and will conclude that YOU must be the crazy one, to make up these stories. (look at how things went down with Sherman, he got called a cheater, had phony stories made up about his denials, etc. Even though Sherman has congruently denied the allegations and phony stories from day one, there are posters on this board *still* acting as if those phony stories are true, calling Sherman names.) Borderlines and Narcissists are behind a majority of high-conflict divorces. These issues are rampant in hotly contested family court cases. If not in the ex, good possibility in their attorney, influencing the ex to act that way. Some experts estimates are that about 10% of the (U.S.) population has one of these types of personality disorders or other mental health issues that result in behavior that can only truly be labeled as sociopathic. When you see this type of conflict and drama, start looking for the mental health issues, educate yourself about what you are dealing with, and protect yourself.

Reading about this was amazing to me. This was the END of my teaching career. I worked for somebody who clearly has one of these disorders you're speaking of. Lots of falsified stuff. I actually just went into the district office the other day and pulled my entire file (open records request). Guess what... a lot of what I was "written up for" wasn't in my file and all of the stuff she claimed were obviously lies as they aren't in my file. My lawsuit strengthens. Muahahaha. I should be in court within six months and I am hoping to get all earnings I would have gotten up to retirement plus a full payout on my pension. It's looking better each day. Thanks for the post. If nothing else, it was very validating that I worked for a psycho. I was one of 16 employees to leave the school under her tenure. The school also went from scoring in the 80's to the 40's and have failed to make progress each year since she took over, which is supposed to mean automatic termination. She hasn't been terminated. I think she has others convinced at levels above her that she has stuff on them. What a nutjob.

I don't give 2 rips what his excuse was. The guy is a certifiable sociopath.

And I never thought he was a good writer to begin with. He did more in the way of telling you about how great he was than prove it. No offense to those who enjoyed his work. But I think it was all a massive con game. His best skill was praising himself and attracting impressionable readers.

FG is so much better now, it's not even funny. SB Nation's tablet-minded format really is a shame.

I don't give 2 rips what his excuse was. The guy is a certifiable sociopath.

And I never thought he was a good writer to begin with. He did more in the way of telling you about how great he was than prove it. No offense to those who enjoyed his work. But I think it was all a massive con game. His best skill was praising himself and attracting impressionable readers.

FG is so much better now, it's not even funny. SB Nation's tablet-minded format really is a shame.